Question à Claude Lelouch lors de l'émission d'Isabelle Giordano sur Arte

Devinez la question que j'ai posé au réalisateur Claude Lelouch lors de l'émission Giordano Hebdo Sur Arte. Allez, un indice : cela a un rapport avec le mythe de Pygmalion. Pour le savoir, vous pouvez visionner l'émission sur http://videos.arte.tv ...

Festival du jeu vidéo à Paris : Overclock !

Les éditeurs n'étaient pas présents au Festival du Jeu Vidéo cette année à la Porte de Versailles, mais cela n'a apparemment pas refroidi les visiteurs. En parlant de froid, sur le stand MSI, on pouvait admirer un impressionnant refroidisseur liquide pour une carte mère digne des meilleurs romans cyberpunk. Une machine au boitier translucide laissait voir également ses entrailles au design bleu électrique. Vu le monde, je n’ai pas pu tester réellement l’apport de ces machines overclockées à double carte graphique et composants militarisés, mais il faut reconnaître à MSI une véritable mise en scène style Johnny Mnemonic propice à l’immersion futuriste…

Des robots et des hommes à la Cité des Sciences le 6 Novembre

Qu’ils représentent nos meilleurs espoirs d’une vie sans corvées ou nos pires cauchemars de menaces technologiques, les robots sont aujourd’hui aux portes de nos salons.

Nombreux sont ceux qui envisagent que la robotique au xxie siècle sera l’équivalent de la voiture au xxe siècle, à nos côtés au quotidien pour nous accompagner ou nous assister, physiquement et socialement, ainsi que pour nous divertir. Cependant, cette vision demeure encore de la science-fiction. De nombreux défis scientifiques, technologiques, sociétaux et culturels restent à relever.

Cette journée propose de faire le point sur la distance réelle qu’il reste à parcourir entre sciences et science-fiction à travers différentes démonstrations de robots à la pointe.

Elle sera l’occasion d’aborder les questions à se poser dès aujourd’hui, pour penser la place du robot dans le monde humain et préparer un futur dans lequel hommes et robots cohabiteront mieux que dans la plupart des oeuvres de fiction.

Robots & Avatars

Sorry for that long delay but I was working on my new book, Robots & Avatars. Here is a "teaser":

Since the dawn of humanity, man tries to replicate the living. Among the legends that have influenced this quest, the myth of Pygmalion has a special place. Helped by Venus in the genesis of an artificial beauty, the ancient king fell to his irresistible charm. Since then, the descendants of Galatea has taken many forms: living statues to automatons, robots to cyborgs and clones, artificial intelligence to avatars, to the ghosts that haunt the memory of computers. This book brings together a collection of spectacular images that illustrate the evolution of robots and avatars. It reveals trends in a symbiotic future where the creator and his creation, science and imagination mix.

A final point: its in french... but the color illustrations are so nice. A great gift for christmas!

Alicia answers questions of entrepreneurs

Alicia is the first on-line application of the EVA technology. You can discuss with Alicia on the following page. Alicia was designed for the french Hauts-de-Seine County near Paris to help people searching information about the creation of compagnies. Alicia implements a conversational intelligent agent that is able to answer questions in the french natural language thanks to its knowledge-base which includes near 500 rules. Don't be afraid ! Alicia is not based on the "schizophrenic" architecture (see previous post) but rather on a classical and simpler character design. The animated 3D interface was created by Jean-Philippe Lebrun and most of the integration work was done by Ilyasse El-Khaira. The FAQ knowledge base was implemented in the EVA language by Jean-Claude Torrel. Many thanks to them and also to all the people from the 92 County who works on the Alicia project.

Artificial Life & Robotics 2009

Our paper “An Evolutionary Nano-Agent Control Architecture for Intelligent Artificial Creatures” has been presented at the 14th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (AROB) in Beppu (Japan) last february. Here is the abstract of the paper: This paper describes a new multi-agent architecture for the Evolutionary Virtual Agent project. It introduces the nano-agent bio-inspired control architecture and its nanoScheme programming language. A typical application consists of one or more nano-agents, and possibly up to a large number if necessary as in natural swarms. As an example, it describes an online self-animated character that uses natural language and emotional expressions. This virtual character is based on a “schizophrenic” model composed of multiple distinct personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the user.

About Development Tools

EVA is developped as an open source project. The major part of the source code is designed with the NanoScheme Language and requires no compiler nor specific developement tools. However, we encourage the use of a text editor with Lips editing capabilities such as Notepad++. For more information or to download this editor:

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

The EVA's core technology is designed using the Java language. The current implementation uses the SDK 1.4.2_02 version. You can have more information and download this software developement kit at:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/index.html
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html